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| Trump and Bannon of Breitbart News. |
Federal investigators are examining whether far-right news sites played any role last year in a Russian cyber operation that dramatically widened the reach of news stories — some fictional — that favored Donald Trump’s presidential bid, two people familiar with the inquiry say.
Operatives for Russia appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as “bots,” to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories at times when the billionaire businessman was on the defensive in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, these sources said.
The bots’ end products were largely millions of Twitter and Facebook posts carrying links to stories on conservative internet sites such as Breitbart News and InfoWars, as well as on the Kremlin-backed RT News and Sputnik News, the sources said. Some of the stories were false or mixed fact and fiction, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the bot attacks are part of an FBI-led investigation into a multifaceted Russian operation to influence last year’s elections.
Investigators examining the bot attacks are exploring whether the far-right news operations took any actions to assist Russia’s operatives.
When Alex Jones of Info Wars found about the investigation he had this to say: “I’m not gonna sit here and say, ‘I’m not a Russian stooge,’ because it’s a (expletive) lie,” he said, denying any contact with the Kremlin operatives about bots. He said this issue stemmed from “this whole ridiculous narrative of the bitching left.”
“It’s as if we didn’t build InfoWars,” he said. “It’s as if we don’t have a huge audience.”
Noting he had appeared on RT “probably 100 times or more,” he said sarcastically, “There’s my Russian connection.”
Oh I can hardly wait to see transcripts of HIS interviews!
There is really only ONE appropriate response to hearing that the Feds are investigating Right Wing news outlets for spreading Russian propaganda.
Source http://ift.tt/2n55dro
